Mom nodded. “Too fast.”
Neither of them looked surprised. They looked wary.
The timing made the implication difficult to ignore. The hearing had happened yesterday. And now this.
Edwardo stepped closer, lowering his voice. “We’ll handle it.”
His tone remained calm, but the quiet certainty in his voice did nothing to settle the unease building in my chest.
Later that night, I stepped out onto the back patio. The air had cooled, and a faint briny scent drifted inland from the ocean. Warm light spilled from the house through the glass doors behind me, illuminating the edge of the patio before fading into shadow.
Beyond the driveway, the street remained quiet. I lowered myself into one of the chairs and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. The hearing replayed in my mind. Avery’s steady voice despite the horror she had experienced and dragged herself through again. Tori pushing past the tremor in her hands to speak. The moment the room shifted when the pattern became undeniable.
We had fought to get the truth into the open. We had won that room. But Charles Dunn hadn’t reacted with anger. He’d reacted by adjusting.
My phone buzzed in my hand. A message from Luke.
Luke:Everything still calm over there?
I stared at the empty street beyond the gate for several seconds before typing back.
Me:Too calm.
Luke:Athletics finally let me go.
I exhaled slowly.
Me:And?
The three dots appeared, disappeared, then returned.
Luke:Two-game suspension. They’re calling it a conduct review. Coach wants to fight it.
I didn’t like that anything had happened to him.
Me:What about Logan?
Luke:Didn’t show up for his meeting. They’re handling it internally.
Of course they were.
I lowered the phone to my lap and looked back out at the quiet street. Nothing moved. No cars passed. No footsteps echoed along the sidewalk. The neighborhood remained still.
And for the first time since the hearing ended, the truth came into focus with uncomfortable clarity. The silence wasn’t relief. It felt more like preparation. And whatever came next had already begun moving.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MILA
The tension over the call lingered in the house the next morning. No one mentioned it at breakfast, yet unease threaded through the kitchen in quiet ways that made it impossible to ignore.
As Mom prepared coffee, she moved with deliberate focus, her attention more focused than usual. Every motion carried the same contained determination I had seen the last time our lives collapsed overnight and we fled Blackwood.
The memory surfaced without invitation—the horror of what we had seen, the frantic rush to leave before we were next, and the heartbreak of leaving Luke the way I had.
Back then, we were running, and Mom had operated with urgency. This morning, she moved with the same precision, but the urgency had changed. She was preparing to face a different sort of hurdle instead.
Edwardo sat at the end of the table with a mug in his hands, his posture relaxed but his attention constantly shifting toward the windows and the street beyond. Anyone who didn’t know him would’ve missed the subtle vigilance in the way nothing got past his notice.
